Birth of the Lion: The Development of the IAI Kfir

Mirage IIICJ Shahak (Sky Blazer)

In the early 1950s, the most advanced jet aircraft in the IDF/AF was the Gloster Meteor, the first examples being delivered from Great Britain in 1953 which marked the IDF/AF's first combat jet equipment. Although the Meteors gave good service to the Israelis, the supply of more advanced MiG fighters to its Arab neighbors meant that Israel needed to something more capable than the Meteor- their first choice was the North American F-86 Sabre, but its purchase was thwarted by American government. Israel then turned to France and formed a remarkably close relationship with Dassault in particular. The first Dassault Ouragan jet fighters were delivered in October 1955 as a stopgap measure until the arrival of the supersonic-capable Dassault Mystere IVA in April 1956, becoming the first Israeli combat aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier. The improved Dassault Super Mystere became operational with the IDF/AF in December 1958 along with the Sud Aviation Vatour strike fighter. Israeli Aircraft Industries, started in 1952 as Bedek Aviation in Tel Aviv by American Al Schwimmer, had begun license production of the French jet trainer Fouga Magister in 1957 with the first wholly IAI-built example rolling out in 1960. The IDF/AF's relationship with Dassault as one of its best customers continued with the arrival of the Mirage III series. Israel had a custom variant based on the Mirage IIIC interceptor designated the IIICJ which was first delivered to the IDF/AF on 7 April 1962. IAI's skill set expanded as it modified the Mirage IIICJs as needed for Israeli needs, one of which was a removable nose that contained cameras for reconnaissance missions. It would be an Israeli Mirage IIICJ that scored the first aerial victory for the entire Mirage series worldwide against a Syrian MiG-21 on 14 July 1966. Known as the Shahak (Sky Blazer) in IDF/AF service, the Mirage IIICJs were an integral part of the IDF/AF until their retirement in 1982.

When Charles de Gaulle was elected president of France in December 1958, there was nothing to indicate that the long standing relationship between France and Israel would change for the worse. On 7 April 1966, Israel signed an agreement with Dassault for a custom variant of the Mirage 5 optimized for ground attack and designated Mirage 5J. Named Ra'am (Thunder), the Mirage 5J was a quantum leap in capability over the Mirage IIICJ. Since the weather was generally good in the Middle East, the Mirage 5J (as well as the rest of the Mirage 5 series) traded the all-weather radar capability for an increase in fuel and weapons load (32% more fuel in fact) and small radar ranging unit in a slimmed down nose. Dispensing with many of the electronics of the Mirage IIICJ, the Mirage 5J was not only more capable, but cheaper, with the initial contract for 50 Mirage 5Js and two dual-seat trainer versions of the 5J. Many IDF/AF pilots like the legendary Danny Shapira completed the Mirage 5J flight test program after its first flight on 19 May 1967. But the winds of change were coming to the Middle East despite the rapid progress on the Mirage 5J program by Dassault. With France losing Algeria in 1962 and de Gaulle's desire to be a player in Middle East politics beyond the United States and the Soviet Union, relations between France and Israel were cooling and came to a head in June 1967 during the Six-Day War. The Mirage 5J's first flight was less than a month prior when de Gaulle announced an arms embargo on Israel just three days prior to the start of the Six-Day War. At first the embargo was partial and hope held out that the IDF/AF would still get the Mirage 5J aircraft. But de Gaulle insisted on Israel withdrawing to its pre-1967 lines as a prerequisite for lifting the embargo, something the Israelis obviously refused to do. When the PLO launched a terrorist attack against El Al at the Athens airport on 26 December 1968, the Israelis responded with reprisal attacks against the PLO stronghold in Beirut two days later. In response, France imposed a total embargo on Israel. 

Armee de l'Air Mirage 5F (an embargoed Mirage 5J in French service)

Despite the embargo, Dassault completed the Mirage 5J production run on 19 June 1969, but the completed fighters were put into storage. The Mirage 5J would become the basis for a new family of Mirage 5 variants that would prove popular with other air forces. The Israeli Mirage 5Js in storage were put into service with the French Air Force (AdA) as the Mirage 5F. Some of these airframes ultimately ended up with Chile years later. Israel would eventually get a refund of its money for the first variant of the Mirage 5 series, but in 1969 with tensions running high in the wake of the 1967 war, the only option was for Israel to build its own fighter aircraft. Despite the initial partial embargo, Israeli Aircraft Industries had negotiated for license production of the Mirage 5J in Israel and at the end of 1967 an agreement was signed between IAI and Dassault. Dassault felt that since they were a private company, they weren't bound by the embargo, but the maker of the Atar 9C turbojet of the Mirage 5J, SNECMA, was government owned. Time was of the essence and it would have been time consuming to find a replacement engine for the Atar 9C. At the time, the Swiss company Sulzer was license building the Atar 9C for Switzerland's Mirage order and an engineer with Sulzer, Alfred Fraunknecht, was approached by the Mossad with a deal- supply the engineering data and blueprints for the 9C for $250,000. Approximately 200,000 drawings were transferred before Swiss authorities arrested Fraunknecht and sentenced him to four and a half years of prison. 

Neshers on the flightline. Note the nose painted black to appear like a IIICJ.

Keeping the name Ra'am (Thunder) that was intended for the Dassault-built Mirage 5Js, a highly classified program got underway at IAI to essentially build the 5J with a reverse-engineered Atar 9C. Despite the embargo, the Israelis found many sympathetic supporters in the French aerospace industry to assist with the production of what was called the Nesher (Vulture). Dassault supplied manufacturing jigs and tooling and even whole airframe subassemblies despite the total embargo. Oddly enough, spare parts for the Mirage IIICJ fleet were exempt from the embargo and with the Nesher being a derivative of the 5J which was a derivative of the IIICJ, many spare parts ended up on Nesher aircraft. The first Nesher aircraft made its maiden flight on 21 March 1971 and became operational with the IDF/AF the following October. When the Nesher program ended in 1974, 50 Nesher A single seat fighters were built as well as 10 Nesher B combat trainers. 

IAI Kfirs (from the DML/Dragon 1/144 scale kit box art)

While the Nesher was becoming operational, IAI then turned its attention to rectifying the deficiencies of the aircraft, the biggest of which was the Atar 9C engine. Focus then turned on a re-engined Nesher as the next follow on aircraft. The General Electric J79 was selected as it already powered the F-4E Phantoms that had already been in IDF/AF service for several years. On 21 September 1970 (before the Nesher's maiden flight), IAI conducted the maiden flight of a demonstrator to prove the J79 could be integrated into the Mirage airframe. This demonstrator was a two seat Mirage IIIBJ called the Technolog. The flight test program of the Technolog was used to uncover any issues with using the J79 on the Mirage airframe. The new production aircraft that would use the J79 in a Nesher airframe was named Kfir (Young Lion) and the prototype Kfir that first flew on 4 June 1973 was in fact a Nesher modified to accept the J79 and be representative of the production standard Kfir. The deliveries of the first Kfirs was interrupted by the October Yom Kippur War that year, but it was apparent that the Kfir wasn't the leap in improvement over the Nesher that IAI had hoped. The fix was aerodynamic and would applied to subsequent Kfirs- first, a saw tooth was added to the outboard wing which increased wing chord and the saw tooth created a vortex that energized the wing air flow and acted as a wing fence to stop drag-inducing spanwise flow. Next, canards were added above and behind the intakes which helped control the air flow over the wing and made destabilized the Kfir to make it more agile. Lastly, a pair of strakes was added to the extreme tip of the nose which helped smooth the airflow over the wings and canards. This configuration became known as the Kfir C2 and was the definitive production model that also had extra hardpoints for more weapons. The first production Kfir was delivered on 14 April 1975. One of the Israeli guests of honor was Alfred Fraunknecht, the Swiss engineer who had passed on the Atar 9C turbojet engineering information years earlier for the Nesher program.

Source: Aviation Classics: Dassault Mirage III/5, Issue 17. "Vultures and Young Lions" by David G. Powers, pp 70-81. Photos: Wings Palette, Wikipedia, DML/Dragon Models

How the US Coast Guard Ended up with the Dassault Falcon

HU-25 Guardian on short final into KDAL.

When the United States Coast Guard announced in January 1977 that a maritime patrol version of the Dassault Falcon 20 business jet was selected to replace the Grumman HU-16 Albatross and Convair HC-131As in the medium-range search and rescue role, it was the first time in the Coast Guard's 65-year history at that point that it had selected a non-American aircraft for its purposes. The road that led up to this landbreaking decision actually began in 1971 when the Coast Guard issued it's Medium Range Surveillance (MRS) requirement. At the time, the Coast Guard had selected what would have been a specially-developed version of the North American Rockwell Sabreliner 75 that would have been powered by Avco Lycoming ALF-502 turbofan engines- at the time, production standard Sabreliner 75s were powered by General Electric CF700 engines. However, the USCG came under intense criticism for the first incarnation of the MRS contract as it had not held an open competition for other aircraft manufacturers to submit proposals. Yielding to Congressional pressure, the Coast Guard canceled the contract with North American Rockwell and re-opened the MRS requirement as an open competition in 1975. 

The new MRS requirements stipulated that the aircraft be turbofan-powered to allow a high dash speed and high-altitude performance to fly over weather when enroute to a search area. The cabin had to be at least 600 cubic feet to allow all the equipment needed for fly several missions without having to return to base for a changeout of mission-specific equipment. Basic mission parameters were set at a 700 nm loiter at 2,000 feet at a distance of 150 nm from the base. A speed of at least 350 knots was required during the transit to and from search areas and the aircraft had to be capable of an airspeed of no more than 220 knots at 2,000 feet when in the search area. In March 1976, the USCG had received several submissions for consideration: 

• North American Rockwell submitted it's previous proposed Sabreliner 75 development;
• Gulfstream submitted two versions of the GII business jet, one powered by Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans and one powered by GE CF34 turbofans;
• A highly unconventional submission came from ICX Aviation which had plans to license build the Yakovlev Yak-40 jetliner in Youngstown, Ohio. Their proposal was based on a Yak-40 powered by three Garrett AiResearch TFE731 turbofans;
• Lockheed proposed a version of the Jetstar powered by two GE CF34 engines;
• VFW-Fokker submitted two versions of the VFW 614 jetliner, one with Bendix cockpit avionics and one with Collins cockpit avionics- both versions would have used GE CF34 engines;
• And finally Dassault through the Falcon Jet Corporation (a joint venture between Dassault and Pan Am to market the Falcon 20 in the United States) submitted a version powered by Garrett ATF3 engines called the Falcon HX-XX. 

The HU-25s are being replaced and serve at only 3 air stations.

By the fall of 1976, the field of submissions had been narrowed down to just three- Lockheed's CF34-powered Jetstar, VFW-Fokker's VFW 614 jetliner, and the Falcon HX-XX. Contractor bids were submitted to the Coast Guard on 28 October 1976 based on a 41-aircraft purchase and the Falcon HX-XX came out the cheapest at $4.9 million per aircraft. The VFW 614 was nearly 20% higher in unit price to the Falcon proposal and the Lockheed Jetstar proposal was a surprising 25% higher than the Falcon, coming in as the most expensive option. At the time, the Buy American Act of 1933 was applied to the bids which meant that the VFW-Fokker proposal was increased by an additional 12% in accordance with provisions of the act as it lacked significant American parts. The Falcon HX-XX, however, was exempted from this provision of the Buy American Act as the Falcon Jet Corporation in their proposal would import green airframes from Dassault and finish them out in the United States with American parts to equal 68.1% of the aircraft's value being sourced from US contractors- by the provisions of the law at the time, 50% was considered the minimum to qualify as a domestic product. Knowing the political winds in Washington when it came to a "foreign" aircraft purchase, the Falcon Jet Corporation even showed how over a 10 year service lift the value of American parts in the HX-XX increased to nearly 75%.

As a result, on 5 January 1977, Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman, Jr, announced that the Falcon HX-XX was the winning submission and the aircraft would be designated the HU-25 Guardian in Coast Guard service. It set a precedent for the Coast Guard and two years later the service selected the Aerospatiale (today American Eurocopter) Dauphin helicopter to become the HH-65 Dolphin in the short-range recovery role. History repeated itself again several years ago when the EADS/CASA CN235MP was selected to replace the HU-25 Guardian in the medium range surveillance role- designated HC-144 Ocean Sentry, the first ones were delivered to the USCG in 2006.

Source: Air International, Volume 20, Number 4. "Uncle Sam's Gallic Guardian", p173-179. Photos: JPSantiago, United States Coast Guard

The Spiroid Winglet

In the late 1990s Aviation Partners Inc. (API), the developer of the blended winglet, began to flight test on a Gulfstream II a completely different winglet shape than anything that had flown before, the spiroid winglet. The original patent of the closed-loop shape winglet was originally filed in 1992 by one of API's founders. The basic idea of the spiroid winglet is to take the benefits of the blended winglet to their fullest by essentially bringing the blended winglet to loop back onto the wing. The vortices that stream off the wingtips of aircraft are a major source of drag and in the blended winglet, they have resulted in 5-7% increase in fuel efficiency by attenuating those vortices.

The first version of the spiroid winglets flown in the 1990s on the Gulfstream II were more circular in shape than the current incarnation. Flight testing of the first version resulted in refinements to the design that leads to more of an arch design with the inboard section of the spiroid moved farther aft and outboard to bring it closer to the wingtip vortex. The resultant design is now in flight testing on a Dassault Falcon 50 and the winglets and structural strengthening needed add 500 pounds to the empty weight of the jet. It was this Falcon 50 that made its first public appearance at the recent Oshkosh air show. Constructed of polished aluminum and approximately six feet in height, the new spiroids are not just intended to attenuate the wingtip vortex but to attempt to eliminate them altogether. Should this be the case, the leap in fuel savings and efficiency would be tremendous- on the order of 30% over the existing blended winglet design.

One of the side benefits of the spiroid winglet's possible ability to nearly eliminate the wingtip vortex would be in air traffic flow management at major airports. As it is right now, aircraft spacing is necessary to allow for wake vortex dissipation for the following aircraft. Aircraft with spiroid winglets would allow following aircraft to be spaced closer, in effect easing some of the congestion at major airports and improving flow efficiency.

The Dassault Falcon 50 testbed is to begin its formal flight test program this month to explore flutter, stability, and allow precise measurements of the degree of drag reduction. The aircraft will be initially limited to 250 KIAS and 0.70 Mach but as the tests progress, the flight envelope is anticipated to be expanded and may include icing tests.

Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology, August 2, 2010. "Head Turning Tip" by William Garvey, "Inside Business Aviation" column, p60.

The Politics Behind the French Stratotanker Purchase

On 13 February 1960 France exploded its first thermonuclear weapon, a 60-kiloton device in the Algerian desert, making France the fourth member of nuclear-capable powers. In December of that year, President Charles De Gaulle formally announced his intentions to establish an autonomous nuclear strike force independent of US control based on the Dassault Mirage IV supersonic strike bomber which had made its first flight the year prior.

But the Mirage IV lacked the range to reach targets in the Western Soviet Union and defense planners in the Armee de l'Air (AdA- French Air Force) wanted to acquire an aerial tanker that could launch at a moment's notice with the Mirage IV force, refuel the bombers at high speed and high altitude, and offload fuel quickly to the Mirages. Only the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker met these stringent requirements and negotiations began to purchase 10 KC-135As- 9 tankers for every four Mirage IV in the Force de Frappe (Strike Force) plus one spare. However, with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy came a change in US nuclear strategic doctrine from massive retaliation to one of flexible response- to the new US president, his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, an autonomous French nuclear deterrent would undermine the new strategic doctrine and increase the chance of premature use of nuclear weapons without American oversight.

The sale of the KC-135 to France was seen as equal to nuclear proliferation as the tankers were necessary for the Force de Frappe to reach Soviet targets. By 1962 France increased its Mirage IV force to 50 aircraft and wanted more than just 10 tankers which were agreed on principle by military officials in the US Defense Department. President Kennedy, however, vetoed the sale and even announced at a press conference that the tanker sale was a dead issue. On that very same day, however, the Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatrick approved the sale of 12 KC-135s to be designated C-135FR (ostensibly to hide their purpose as tankers for the Force de Frappe).

Two weeks later at a commencement address at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Defense Secretary McNamara reiterated official US policy of opposing any aid that allowed an independent French nuclear deterrent. Despite this, a month later, both McNamara himself and Secretary of State Dean Rusk signed off on the tanker sale worth $50 million. At the time the sale was rationalized as an offset for American gold losses to France and concern by the US Treasury Department about foreign accumulation of gold. However, with the end of the Cold War, declassified documents show the sale was undertaken quietly in an effort to improve strained relations between France and the United States.

The first AdA C-135FRs arrived in France at Istres in 1964 following completion of KC-135 crew training by the French at Castle AFB in California. The last C-135FR arrived in October of that year which coincided with the Force de Frappe's first operational Mirage IV nuclear alert. Initial Mirage IV operations included a 24-hour airborne alert of Mirage IV bombers supported by the C-135FRs, but these were ended in 1967 as they could not be afforded by France unlike the US Strategic Air Command's "Chrome Dome" airborne alert.

In 1966, President De Gaulle went ahead and pulled France out of NATO's military command, an action that was only reversed in March of 2009 when President Nicholas Sarkozy signed a decree supported by the French legislature re-integrating France into NATO.

Source: Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker- More Than Just A Tanker by Robert S. Hopkins III. Aerofax, 1997, p73-75.

When Israeli Aircraft Industries created the Kfir fighter-bomber by replacing the SNECMA Atar turbojet with a more powerful GE J79 engine, the additional modifications required to accommodate the American engine (which was shorter but heavier) along with the avionics needed for the strike role and the heavier undercarriage to increased takeoff weights with heavy bombloads degraded the performance and maneuverability of the the first generation Kfirs. Rather than try increasing the thrust of the J79 engine, IAI engineers decided the solution would have to be an aerodynamic one.

The addition of canards was favored early on and Dassault cautioned IAI about adding canards to the aircraft based on the French experience with the Mirage Milan canard test aircraft. Despite the warnings, no other solution was seen as being viable, so flight testing of the canard proceeded on the Technolog, a two-seat Mirage III that first tested the installation of the J79 engine.

Nose strakes near the tip of the nose were also found (even before the canard solution was reached) to improve high AoA performance but this came at the cost of buffeting at high AoAs, something that would have been unacceptable in air combat. The buffeting was cured on the suggestion of one of the IAI test pilots to add a wing leading edge saw-tooth which helped smooth the local airflow.

These modifications improved the Kfir's performance with the addition of wing area in the form of the canards that shifted the aircraft center of gravity forward, reduced the stability margin enough that the aircraft would be more responsive. The vortices that came off the canard smoothed the airflow over the delta wings which enhanced their lift and performance particularly at high angles of attack. The saw-tooth leading edges also slightly increased wing area and the vortices created by the saw tooth augmented the canard-produced vortices.

The combination of these modifications only added 187 lbs of weight to the new Kfir version designated C2. The side benefit of the structural strengthening of the fuselage for the canards (fuselage Section 10) is that that area was able to also accommodate an additional pair of weapons pylons under the intakes, giving the Kfir a total of five underfuselage pylon stations.

The Kfir C2 entered service with the IDF in 1977. The earlier Kfir C1s only got the nose strakes and a much reduced canard as the structural strengthening and modification to full C2 standards was deemed not worth the effort. Many of those earlier-variant Kfir C1s flew with US Navy and US Marine Corps adversary units in the 1980s as the F-21A Lion.

Source: International Air Power Review, Volume 15. AIRtime Publishing, 2005, "Warplane Classic: IAI Kfir- Israel's Lion Cub" by Shlomo Aloni, p137-139.

As often as eight times in a year, a French Navy (Marine Nationale Aeronavale) Dassault Falcon 50M SURMAR (SURveillance MARitime) of the unit Flottille 24F deploys to Cayenne in French Guyana via Dakar, Senegal from its home base at Lann-Bihoue in France. While there, the Falcon 50M conducts patrols of the French exclusive economic zone offshore before Ariane rocket launches from the Kourou Space Centre to be sure the areas were the rocket's boosters fall back to earth are clear of shipping.

Source: Air International, August 2009. "SAR Dream Machine" by Henri-Pierre Grolleau, p50.

After a quarter century of using the Dassault HU-25 Guardian on sea patrols, the US Coast Guard is transitioning to the EADS CASA HC-144A Ocean Sentry which is based on the CN-235 transport. Though it may seem backwards to go from a pure jet to turboprop aircraft, the HC-144A carries the same fuel load as the HU-25 but burns it at half the rate which translates longer time-on-station, eight to nine hours versus the Guardian's four hours on-station. The per-hour operating cost has improved as well with the HC-144A costing less than $1000/hour compared to the Guardian's $1500-$1800/hour.

In addition, the HC-144A has a rear cargo door/ramp as well as a belly-mounted observation bubble allowing SAR crews to do something not previously possibly on other USCG aircraft- look below the aircraft. The last of the Guardians should be retired in 2020 (of the 21 in service now) and replaced with 36 HC-144A Ocean Sentries. Five are now in service with pilot training taking place at CGAS Mobile, Alabama.

Source: Air & Space Smithsonian, January 2009. "Then & Now: Frozen Moments as Time Marches On" by Paul Hoversten, p68.

In the early 1960s Dassault was seeking a US partner to license build the Falcon 20 business jet for the US market. Grumman, Lockheed, North American, and McDonnell were out as they had their own business jet designs in development (Gulfstream, Jetstar, Sabreliner, and McDonnell 119/220, respectively). Douglas was already working with Piaggio on the PD-808 "Vespa Jet", Beechcraft had formed an alliance with Hawker Siddeley on the HS.125, and Convair was mired in problems with their CV-880/990 jetliners.

That left Boeing. Dassault approached Boeing and the the board of directors after careful examination of Dassault's proposal elected to not invest in the bizjet market, preferring to continue to keep its capital in its growing commercial airframe business.

Source: Flightpath, Volume 2/Winter 2003. "Dassault Falcon: Mystere Magic" by David Donald (Variant File), p84.